


Ripple

by AHeartIsAHeart



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It of Sorts, Friendship, I'll add tags as I go on I guess?, Inheritance, Kyuubi | Nine-tails | Kurama & Uzumaki Naruto Friendship, Light Angst, Miserably, Naruto lacks social skills but hides it with Big Chaotic Energy, No redemption arc for the akatsuki sorry, Parental Kyuubi | Nine-tails | Kurama, References to Depression, Slow To Update, Smart Uzumaki Naruto, Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village, at least I hope I can pull that off, but he tries really hard not to be, everyone will be a BAMF, he fails, like VERY deep friendship, maybe I'll skim over their reasons though, no beta we die like men, personal history, shameless canon divergence, talk-no-jutsu minimized
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23892226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHeartIsAHeart/pseuds/AHeartIsAHeart
Summary: A lonely child makes friends with the equally lonely monster inside of him.
Relationships: Kyuubi | Nine-tails | Kurama & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 31
Kudos: 494





	1. Drop

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Of Harrowed Hearts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8211566) by [Sable_Scribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sable_Scribe/pseuds/Sable_Scribe). 



> *inaudible screeching* 
> 
> I finally made a naruto fic

Every day, Naruto wakes up slowly, staring up at the ceiling for thirty minutes to an hour before he gets up and tries to do something productive. 

He is six years old, and already living alone. The Hokage pays for his apartment’s rent, as well as his school fees, and he gets a weekly stipend that he can spend on whatever he likes. 

On weekdays, he eats rice and some miso, hurries to school, then hurries back home. 

He doesn’t play with the children outside – not that they want to even be near him.

His teachers either look at him like he shouldn’t exist or like he doesn’t. 

He is too young to understand everything, and yet already so much older than he looks on the outside.

*

He is seven years old when an angry, grief-mad civilian attacks him. 

He is walking home from Ichiraku ( _the only place where anyone seemed to care at all_ ) and he can hear the whispers as he passes, can see the way people get out of his way only to sneer and glare at his back. 

He doesn’t know why they bother hiding. It’s not as if they’re subtle. 

A man – almost from out of nowhere – smashes his empty bottle of sake on Naruto’s head. He is screaming something about a demon. 

Naruto just stares at the man until another man wearing a mask jumps in and knocks the drunk out.  
He can feel something wet trickling down his face, but it doesn’t register to him until he gets home that it’s blood. 

It hurts when the medic-nin close the wound ( _it’s much smaller than I expected – no, it really should be bigger than just this… what is this kid?_ ) but it hurts more when he hears the familiar whispers as he leaves the hospital.  
*

He’s eight years old and in the middle of class in the academy – another thing to thank the Hokage for, he supposes, but he’s not listening to anything the teacher is saying. 

Iruka-sensei is kind, and takes him to Ichiraku sometimes and talks to him. 

He is kind, but Naruto can see in his eyes whenever he looks at Naruto that he reminds his teacher of something he looks like he’d rather forget. 

Naruto ignores it, because Iruka-sensei is kind like old man Teuchi and his daughter Ayame are, and he doesn’t want to spoil that with doubt. 

He wants to make Iruka-sensei proud, but it’s difficult to listen in class. He ends up at the very bottom of the class.

He spends the morning smiling like nothing is wrong (everything is wrong, everything) and lets it out at night when he knows no one is there to watch him break down. 

It’s pathetic. But he can’t help it. It’s a ritual now, just like waking up to his cold, sterile apartment, or walking to and from school with people whispering behind his back. 

He plays pranks. Vandalizes school property and eventually even the faces on Hokage Rock. 

He plays it off as just mischief, but really he wants people to see. 

He doesn’t know what he wants them to see, just that they see something besides whatever it is that makes them hate him. 

He doesn’t understand. 

*

In public, Sarutobi is secure in the knowledge that Minato and Kushina’s legacy is safe, that the Kyuubi is sealed away and Naruto is protected and provided for as much as he can be. 

In private, he knows he’s failed them in the worst way possible. But he is a Kage – his village comes first, above all else. 

( _Every night is the same. Hound reports that the child cries when he thinks no one can hear, and Sarutobi’s heart twists at the reminder of his utter failure._ )

So Naruto continues to live, unaware of who he is, what’s inside him, and why he is hated so (have they forgotten what his father and mother have done for this village? how short human memory can be), hiding sorrow sunk deep enough into his bones that it’s starting to drag him little by little into the grave. 

He’s drowning, but he’s given up on any hope that anyone will help.

He tries calling for help, anyway. 

He doesn't know why.

*

Naruto is nine years old when he wakes up in an unfamiliar place. A sewer, dark and damp, filled ankle-high with stagnant water and smelling like mold and rot.

“ _What the hell are you doing here._ ” The voice is so big that it makes the ground tremble under Naruto. 

Naruto is nine, and smaller than most of his class from a combination of malnutrition and depression but his feet stay steady. He looks up at massive iron bars that stretch from ceiling to floor, a jail that hides something in the darkness beyond.  
He doesn’t hesitate. He comes closer, childlike curiosity winning out over self-preservation instinct ( _not that Uzumaki in general had much of one – idiots, the lot of them, geniuses, and long-lived if they weren't killed, but idiots_ ).

A massive red eye, bigger than Naruto is tall, stares down at him from the darkness, and a low growl comes from behind the bars. 

“ _Leave me, brat. Keep your filthy human presence away from me._ ” It snarls. But even at this age, Naruto is unfortunately (tragically) familiar with everything that he can hear under the anger and hate – loneliness and sorrow so deep that it sinks into his bones, making every waking moment dull and every movement heavy with grief that he still doesn’t understand.

But maybe this other thing behind the bars will. 

They share the same grief – Iruka-sensei always said that having things in common helped to make friends. It’s never worked before, but maybe it will now.

“Why are you here?” Naruto wonders aloud. “Where am I anyway?”

“ _**GET OUT!** _” The voice roars, and before long its owner comes rushing at the bars, roaring so loudly Naruto is afraid he might wake up deaf. 

The creature that comes out of the dark isn’t what Naruto expects. It’s a giant fox – big enough that the cliff with the faces on it would seem small in comparison. Furious (but lonely, so lonely and sad) eyes, red like a sunset verging on dusk, glare down at him as the giant fox snarls, saliva dripping from its mouth to the stagnant water below. Its fur looks orange in the dim light of the sewer, but if Naruto squints he can see gold, red, yellow, black – the fur is filthy, but there is beauty under the grime. The fox itself is emaciated, its ribs showing clearly as though it has been starved for weeks, maybe months on end. 

“Are you okay?” Naruto asks, his voice carrying such sincere worry that the fox in the cage is caught off-guard. It stops snarling, though it keeps glaring at Naruto through the bars. 

“Are you hungry?” Naruto tries again, and the fox simply continues to stare. Naruto doesn’t see it – because as accustomed as he is to sorrow, he’s not quite familiar with much else – but the fox’s gaze is full of confusion rather than fury. Irritated curiosity, rather than hate. 

“ _I don’t need to eat._ ” The statement is simple, but it confuses Naruto – what does this fox mean, it doesn’t need to eat? Everyone needs to eat!

“But you’re so thin!” Naruto presses, and nothing but childlike innocence and a heartbreaking desperation to make a friend, any friend, it doesn’t matter who, pushes him to come even closer to the bars, just in front of a massive slit-pupiled eye and teeth that are big as houses. “Can’t you get out from here? Or – or maybe I’ll bring you food!” He doesn’t feel the tears building in his eyes, doesn’t hear the soft drip of water as they fall. 

“Where are we, anyway? I can come back! I’ll try to as soon as I can!” the child insists, even as tears stream down his face, as if he’s already accepted that he can’t make a friend here, but he wants to try, he wants to try, because for as much as Naruto has grown to be used to being alone, he has never grown out of his desire to have friends.

It is perhaps this child’s desire, more pure and clear than anything else in the world, that pushes the fox to say what he does next. 

“ _Brat. I’m telling you, I don’t need food._ ” He grumbles, shifting to lie low, putting his head at level with his jailor. “ _If you want to come back so badly, then just meditate, or something._ ” He swishes his tails – all nine, every single one capable of flattening a mountain without effort, every single one burned into the memory of anyone who was aware enough to see the destruction they’d wrought upon Konoha, the people that the Kyuubi killed in its rampage. 

The child doesn’t so much as react to the tails, latching instead onto the words “come back.” The tears don’t quite go away, but there’s something that shines in his gaze now that reminds the fox too much of stars, of the sage wishing them well as they went their separate ways – 

“Then I will! I’ll come back soon, and I’ll have food for you!” Naruto declares, and the fox feels like he should be offended that this little human brat thinks he can treat him like he’s some kind of pet, but he knows it’s not meant in that way. 

It’s a desire to help, to befriend. Not meant to be patronizing or degrading in any way. 

More importantly, the brat doesn’t know what he is. Eight years of being stuck with a beast seething just under his skin, and his damned village couldn’t even be bothered to tell the brat what the hell they’d done to him. 

It’s offensive, honestly. Beast of hate and malice he may be, but the fox still has _standards._ His fox’s instincts tell him he can use this. The brat was a child, not only that but a lonely one – he can smell, taste the child’s sadness in the air. It would be child’s play to work his way into its trust, and manipulate it into opening his seal, setting him free to destroy the whole sage-damned village for depriving him of his freedom. 

( _Or at least, that is what he tells himself he will do._ ) 

“Kitsune-san, what’s your name?” Naruto asks. “I’m Naruto! Naruto Uzumaki!” 

The fox replies, and far into the future, he and the man that this child will become will laugh at how he sounded at this moment, peeved and irritated that a child had managed to drag him into talking, but somehow still more vulnerable than he ever had been before.

“ _My name is Kurama._ ” The fox growls, lazily flicking a tail. “ _The Nine-tailed fox._ ”

Naruto wakes up four hours late to school but happier than he’s ever been in his life. 

Because for the first time, he has a friend.

*

Naruto doesn’t quite have to meditate to be able to get back to the dirty sewer-space where Kurama is imprisoned so much as he has to just be absolutely knocked-out asleep.

To his great disappointment, there is no way to bring food into the sewer. He supposes he’ll have to find another way, then, when he and Kurama are better friends.

( _Friend._ He has a _friend._ ) 

Progress is slow – Kurama is stubborn, and his hatred of humans is no joke or exaggeration. His first few exchanges with Naruto are tense, and ended more often with Naruto waking up late for school and with a mild headache. 

It’s not as if being late to class is very new to him, though, so Naruto just takes the shit grades and rolls with them. 

Progress comes when Naruto asks why Kurama is behind bars. 

Anger flares in the fox’s eyes as he snaps “ _Your fucking kind put me here._ ” He seethes, his anger literally boiling the water around him. “ _I was sealed into you by your parents, when you were born. Stuck into this fucking place…_ ” the bars rattle when Kurama hits them with a tail, but they hold. 

“Destroying your pathetic village is the least that I’m going to do.” Kurama snarls. “ _I’ll rip this entire accursed place out of existence, turn it and everything in it into dust –_ “

“Then it's good that you're stuck here with me, huh?” Naruto asks, giving Kurama a cheeky grin. 

“ _Don’t get smart with me, brat._ ” Kurama growls. 

A moment of silence between them, quiet but not uncomfortable, instead more like understanding. Peace.

“You’re why they look at me like that.” Naruto murmurs. “Like – like a monster.”

“ _Idiot humans can’t even separate how they see you from me._ ” Kurama snorts. 

“But I’m not you.” Naruto says, like he’s testing the words out in his mouth. 

“ _Obviously._ ” Kurama rolls his eyes. Has the Uzumaki Idiot Gene finally resurfaced in the brat? Was Minato’s coloring all that he’d given him? 

There’s another moment of silence, until Naruto breaks it again. 

“What were they like?” Naruto asks, so quietly even Kurama has to strain his ears a bit to hear. “My parents.”

“ _They never told you?_ ” Kurama asks, more bewildered now than angry – and that seems to be a trend when it comes to this brat, and he’s not sure if he likes it or not. 

Naruto shakes his head. “All I know is my name. Uzumaki Naruto. No one I ask will tell me, not even Hokage-jiji or Iruka-sensei.” 

And this one statement, made by a child just barely eight and a half years old, that confirms how utterly alone the goddamned village has left him, sparks something in Kurama that he refuses to acknowledge, even as it drives him to describe, in detail, what Naruto’s parents were like. 

Naruto takes everything in, from his father’s genius hiding a man who was almost slavishly devoted to his wife, even when he became the Hokage, who was a terror in war but unfailingly gentle with those he cared about, to his mother’s own strength, her clan, her absolute, undying love for her son even before he’d been born, and the respect she commanded from all she met. 

He doesn’t lie, because as much as Kurama hates them for sealing him away again, he understands more than anything what it feels like to lose family. But, in a way, what the fucking shithole of a village that Minato and Kushina served had done so much worse than that – they erased those two from the child’s past, as if he never had a family to begin with. 

The child is young, but also so very, very old. Older than he should be, but this time he understands. 

Kurama expects resentment, but is met instead with a smile. 

“You’ve had it hard, too, huh?” The brat says, his smile hiding a wealth of sadness behind it – but also healing. 

It makes something warm bloom inside of him, like a little fire welcoming him home.  
*

At ten years old, any antagonism between Naruto and Kurama is mostly faded, replaced with a tentative kind of friendship. 

Naruto compares it to making friends with a wild animal. Kurama snorts but does not correct him.

*

At eleven years old, they are family. The only family and friend that Naruto has ever had. 

Kurama teaches him things he remembers from Mito and Kushina, and Naruto applies them in ways that remind Kurama of not only Minato and Kushina, but also Mito. 

At eleven years old, Naruto’s considerable loyalty, his love, his passion, is given freely to the monster that Konoha sealed inside of him.

And unknown to them, the monster gives everything back and more. 

He is no longer at the bottom of the class, but he takes care not to be at the top, either. His smiles are smaller but more real, and Iruka knows in his heart that something has changed in the boy, but can’t bring himself to care as he sees the child smiling like he means it, and not like he’s hiding wounds. 

Whatever or whoever it is who brought this change on his favorite student, he thanks them with all his heart. He regrets his own weakness that stopped him from being that person for Naruto, but he doesn’t care so long as his problem child is happy.

The eleven-year-old child he knows now is far more preferable to the sullen one he’d known before. Bright smiles and carefree laughs, even though his classmates are still stuck on ignoring or insulting or avoiding him. 

He’s like a star, and Iruka knows that eventually all of Konoha will know him by his shine.

*

But then suddenly Naruto disappears for a month, and it drives the village into uproar. 

Their jinchuuriki is gone, vanished into thin air, and not even the ANBU know where he’s gone. 

_This shouldn’t be possible._ Sarutobi thinks. _There’s nowhere for him to go outside of the village._

But clearly there was, because they’d searched high and low inside the village, asked those who knew him if they’d seen him recently ( _so many dismissive statements, like Naruto was just some trash that was better off left forgotten, only the ramen cook and his daughter expressing worry of any kind -_ ) but there was no sign at all. 

His apartment was bare and cold, impersonal. The only thing that even marked it as Naruto’s was the orange jumpsuit left to dry on the windowsill. 

If Naruto has run away to escape from the village that has treated him with nothing but contempt, Sarutobi can't find it in himself to blame the child. 

But if Naruto comes to harm like this, he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to consider himself any kind of Kage at all.

*

A young boy sifts through the ruins of a long-destroyed village, memories recounted by a quiet voice in his chest, his gut, and his mind guiding his search. 

He does not notice the man watching him from afar, clad in a black coat adorned with stylized red clouds.


	2. Ripple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The path to the present is, all things considered, somewhat rough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer chapter to make up for my being so late.

The ruins of Uzushiogakure are full of bones. 

It’s strange. Naruto doesn’t feel much about them personally, but it’s still sad to see that no one cared enough to even bury these people, or even seems to remember that this village ever existed in the first place. 

For the most part, Kurama is quiet besides telling him where he best remembers something used to be. 

_“A vault.”_ The fox mutters, trying to sift through his own memories of the place before it fell. _“Not much inside, but definitely with a lot of seals on it.”_

“What’s in it?” Naruto asks aloud. He feels a bit like a graverobber, doing this – digging through ruins and burning the bones he finds with a simple fire jutsu. It’s the least he can do, for disturbing the place like this – Kurama doesn’t entirely understand, thinks it doesn’t really matter since they’d have been whisked away into another life or something by now, but he doesn’t comment. 

_“Only the most important things.”_ Kurama says, showing the mental image to Naruto – a cramped space, with two shelves that would be about as tall as his waist, filled to the brim with scrolls and books. Another, smaller shelf holds some paper seals, a Seals on the shelves and on the walls to keep water and hot air out, carefully set to preserve the shelves’ contents for as long as needed – _“It was a family vault, I think. Something like that._

The fact that Kurama even bothered to remember any of this is lucky, because without it Uzushio really would have been lost – it’s just that nobody thought to ask the angry chakra beast if there was anything left of the place after the survivors had split. 

“Why do I need to go looking for it, anyway?” Naruto complains for the nth time, in a tone that only the young and young-at-heart can really pull off. 

_“Because,”_ Kurama starts, sounding bored by the answer already. _“For whatever reason, you want to become a shinobi. I don’t know shit about jutsu or any of your little human inventions, so here’s a place where there might be stuff left from people who_ did. _”_

The last statement is said with a grudging kind of admiration, and from what Kurama told Naruto ( _“Of course not.” Kurama had said, when Naruto had asked if he’d been lying one day. “What would I get from lying to you, anyway?” He’d answered, annoyed. Naruto never brought it back up again._ ), the village of Uzushio, with all of the sealing experts and prodigies that it produced both Uzumaki and not and the sheer tenacity of the clans that called it home, certainly deserved respect if not admiration.

“You liked them a lot, didn’t you?” Naruto teases. He _feels_ more than _sees_ Kurama flicking his ears at him, a snarl on his face, but still somehow impossibly fond. “Aww, you really did! 

_“Eat shit, you fucking brat.”_ Kurama grumbles in his head. _“See if I ever help you with anything again.”_

Naruto just laughs and keeps looking. Something as important as a time capsule vault wouldn’t be left as accessible to just anyone. At the bare minimum, it would have been hidden and all kinds of seals would have been slapped on the entrance to keep unwanted people from noticing it, much less entering it. Kiri had skilled shinobi, but no one in the world could match Uzushio shinobi when it came to fuinjutsu, and that hadn’t changed much since the village had fallen. 

The place that would make the most sense for something like that would have been under or at least near the administrative building or the library, so Naruto goes where Kurama remembers them to have been. 

Bones, bones, ashes, rocks, bones, and – amazingly enough – more bones. Naruto was beginning to think that he’d die of starvation before he managed to find anything. 

Then, for just a fraction of a second, he feels something poke at his chakra before it darts away as quickly as it came, only to come back to poke him again. And again. And again. 

Kurama’s curiosity blends with Naruto’s, and the fox takes hold of the sensation from inside his jail, pushing Naruto to where he _thinks_ it’s leading them. 

What they reach is an innocuous column of stone, not much different from the pillars like it in the other parts of the village, except for the absurd leak – or maybe more like _river_ of chakra pouring out from underneath it. 

It takes an hour of pushing the pillar, Kurama’s mocking Naruto’s lack of physical ability, and a lot of cursing from Naruto, but the pillar eventually falls over to reveal a smooth black stone surface, with dozens of small seals covering every inch of obsidian.

Naruto sits down to study it more closely. Touching the slab itself doesn’t do anything to him or to it, and other than being _really_ annoying by constantly giving him chakra pokes every few seconds, it doesn’t do anything on its own. 

“Hey, Kurama. Can’t _you_ do something about this?” Naruto asks. “You were sealed in my mom and the shodaime’s wife right? Shouldn’t you know a lot about seals by now?”

_“If Mito was alive to hear you wave her off as that idiot Senju’s wife, you wouldn’t be breathing for long after you said that.”_ Kurama says dryly. _“And yeah, brat, I do know a lot about seals. I’m just not good at using them.”_

“Oh? The great and mighty Kurama, strongest of the bijuu, actually admitted to not being able to do something?” Naruto laughs. “Is the world ending? Are you sick?” 

For once, though, Kurama doesn’t rise to the bait. _“Seals are delicate work, fishcake.”_ He says. _“A single line could be a millimetre off and the entire thing would be ruined.”_ Kurama hesitates, like he doesn’t really want to say something, but continues. _“…and my handwriting is shit, so even if I was able to practice – which I wasn't - I wouldn’t be good at it anyway.”_

Hearing that just makes Naruto laugh harder, because the thought of Kurama of all people sulking about his _horrible penmanship_ was just too much to take. Kurama growls, faux-angry, but lets the brat have his fun. 

_“Focus, fishcake. Or you really will take a year just trying to open this.”_ Kurama says, when Naruto’s laughter dies down. _“Most of the seals look like they’re powering a misdirection to keep someone from being able to find them. Probably a light genjutsu, or something.”_

“But then why does it keep poking at my chakra like that?” Naruto mutters. “It’s supposed to be hidden, so why did it call me to it?” 

_“That might be the seal in the center.”_ Kurama points out. _“It’s probably the main lock, keyed to the one who set the seal and their family.”_ He waits for that to sink in. 

“…An Uzumaki?” Naruto asks, though he already knows the answer. “An Uzumaki set the seal?” 

_“Don’t sound so surprised, fishcake.”_ Kurama rolls his eyes. _“The seal called you, and if I remember it then obviously Kushina or Mito would have had something to do with it. The vault was probably an Uzumaki family's, might even have been your grandparents'.”_

Naruto blinked. “So?” 

_“If anything is going to open that seal it’s going to be the blood of an Uzumaki.”_ Kurama says patiently. _“So bite your thumb – or anything, really, I don’t know why you humans insist on using your thumbs – and smear your blood on the seal.”_

It’s not exactly something Naruto has done before, so it takes him a bit to gather the courage to bite down hard enough to draw blood. The pain is quick, but fleeting – not really that much worse than the shuriken and kunai that they handled at the academy. 

He presses his bloody thumb to the stone, right in the center of the seal. It’s slow – maybe because of time, or maybe because Naruto is a foreign entity despite his being an Uzumaki. The center seal is the first to disappear, fading slowly away, before the other seals abruptly disappear like they’ve simply been wiped off of the stone entirely. 

_“Oh, good, that worked.”_ Kurama sighs, taking a glance at the now-blank stone through Naruto’s eyes (and that – is not something Naruto is going to be able to get used to anytime soon.)

“What would have happened if it didn’t?” Naruto asks. Before Kurama can answer, the ground underneath him moves, the sounds of old machinery filling the air as a narrow, spiral staircase reveals itself where the seal used to stand. 

_“Oh, you might have lost a hand.”_ Kurama says, cackling at Naruto’s disbelief. 

“WHAT?! WHAT THE HELL –“ Naruto shouts, and it’s a good thing no one else is around because he looks absolutely _insane,_ shouting at nothing. “Could you maybe warn me next time something like that could happen, you damn fox?!” 

_“It would have been fine.”_ Kurama says dismissively. _“It would have just been a simple disabling seal, enough that the owner of the vault would be able to get to an intruder before they managed to escape. All that would have happened is that you wouldn’t be able to use chakra and you’d be tied to the seal of a while.”_

“That’s not exactly something that _people_ are used to, damn fox. I don’t _want_ to lose a hand even if I _would_ get it back.” Naruto retorts. 

_“If this seal wasn’t holding me back so much, getting stabbed through the chest wouldn’t be much of a problem for you.”_ Kurama scoffs. 

He goes down the stairwell, noting the seals that decorate the walls – each and every one still looks like it was put there just minutes before, and Naruto avoids touching the walls even though he knows that there’s no way the ink would still be wet after this long. 

The vault itself is almost exactly as Kurama had shown him, but it’s clear that it had already been accessed before. The scrolls and books on the shelves are in disarray, and most of the paper seals, explosive tags, shuriken, and kunai had all been taken from the short middle shelf. 

Probably someone digging for what they could use during the siege on the village. It’s a bit depressing that so many of the _cool_ stuff had already been taken away, but there’s enough left that Naruto could probably add a lot to his monthly budget if he decided to sell the stuff to the library. 

Not that he would. 

The vault is also small, to the point that Naruto’s fingertips can touch the ceiling when he reaches up, and the shelves themselves take up a third of the room despite all being lined up on one wall. 

It’s only fast reflexes born from a life of having to dodge rocks and “stray shuriken” that keep Naruto from falling over when he steps on a scroll, barely catching himself before he brains himself on the edge of a shelf. Grumbling, he picks it up, turning it this way and that to try and see what it’s for. 

As scrolls go, it’s… pretty plain, though a little bigger than usual. The scroll is made of plain, yellow cloth, which tells Naruto that it’s not an expendable one – cloth like this, soft and probably porous enough to be easy to paint seals on after some treating, wouldn’t be easy to make or obtain, so it would make sense if it was a multiple-use kind of thing. It reminds him somewhat of Tenten’s weapon scrolls that she’d shown off one day in class. 

_“The thing’s charged with plenty of chakra that hasn’t been activated yet.”_ Kurama notes. 

Opening it reveals the kanji for “Warehouse” surrounded by an elaborate network of lines and script – which pretty much confirms Naruto’s assumption that it would be kind of like Tenten’s scrolls, but probably with a bigger capacity. In that case, then it probably worked the same way Tenten’s did – just feed the seal some chakra, and you can put stuff in and out. Simple, but effective. 

_“I know where this is going, brat.”_ Kurama says. _“No. You’re not making that joke.”_

“You have no sense of humor.” Naruto grumbles, foiled, as he puts the scroll on top of the center shelf, the “Warehouse” figure in full view. 

_“No, your jokes are just shit.”_ Kurama retorts. _“Hurry up and get everything into the scroll. At this point, your Hokage and his pet shinobi are probably collectively going insane trying to find you.”_

Naruto winces, thinking about what the old man would think about his leaving so suddenly. The Hokage didn’t know that Naruto knew he was a Jinchuuriki, so he could probably play that up and get through everything with a scolding. 

The scrolls and books left behind include detailed explanations on sealing techniques and some random applications of basic seals, some medical formulas, a very, very old scroll that Kurama identifies, somewhat amusedly, as a summoning contract, and a book detailing the history of Uzushiogakure and the clans that called it home.  
What’s left of the ninja tools are a few shuriken, kunai and senbon, as well as a jar of what can only be ink, next to a case with some (unfortunately expired) soldier pills and another case full of herbs.  
It’s not quite the amazing trove of culture and knowledge or money that Naruto was kind of hoping for, but it’s – workable. Better this way, he supposes, than a bunch of scrolls that he couldn’t make sense of at all. He can work with mildly confusing, especially with Kurama to help him understand more.

It’s a start, and Naruto feels – not happy, but more… satisfied. 

For whatever it was worth, this was his clan’s legacy. This - this is _him,_ or at least something close to him, and he wants to know more, wants to read and try everything already, because this time he can be _someone_ besides the unwilling vessel for an equally unwilling demon fox. 

Because as much as they are friends now, family, Kurama can’t make the people of Konoha _not_ hate Naruto, and nothing will change the aversion that the other children have for him. Not unless he _proves,_ without a doubt, that he’s more than what they think.

*

He’s just about done packing everything into the scroll when Kurama warns him that someone is coming. 

_“This stupid seal – I didn’t sense them until now, but there’s someone waiting for you to come out!”_ Kurama barks at him. _“Not right outside the staircase, but close. There’s only one, but I’m positive it’s a shinobi. Not anyone friendly, either – I can feel a lot of malice coming from them.”_

Naruto stuffs the warehouse scroll into his pack, cautiously bringing out a kunai. Uzushio has been ruined for a long time, now, and there is nothing for anyone to come back to here unless they knew about this vault, like Kurama did. 

If he goes out of the vault the same way he came in, there’s no way that he wouldn’t be ambushed as soon as he emerged from the stairwell. But… _was_ there another way out?

Smearing his blood on the seals on the walls didn’t do anything, though, so there was no other option but to walk out the way he came. 

His grip on the kunai is so tight that he thinks he might see blood on the handle later, and as soon as he walks out of the vault and back up into the village ruins, ready to dart back in if someone _does_ rush him so he can fight them – 

“HI~ MISTER BLONDIE!” A male voice calls out. Naruto blinks, and when he opens his eyes a man wearing a black coat with designs of red clouds all over it stands in front of him, his face hidden by a spiraling orange mask with one hole over an eye. 

_“Naruto, look away!”_ Kurama all but shouts. _“If you look into that bastard’s eye, he’ll trap you in a genjutsu that even I wouldn’t be able to break! **Look away!** ”_

Naruto makes a point to focus on the man’s coat. He doesn’t want to risk getting trapped in a genjutsu even _Kurama_ is afraid of, and this way he can keep an eye on the man’s hands, see if he tries to pull anything off – 

“You’re a smart one, huh, Naruto-kun?” The masked man drawls. The way he says Naruto’s name says shivers up his spine – not only because of how _wrong_ it sounded, but also from the simple fact that _this stranger knew his name._

A strange feeling, like something is _twisting_ around him, is all the warning Naruto needs before he throws himself out of the way, seeing the space where he’d just been twisting unnaturally, almost like it’s collapsing in on itself.

He barely has time to breathe before he gets that _twisting_ feeling again, and this time, he only barely manages to push himself off the ground and out of the way, bits of rock and soil disappearing as the spatial contortion swallows them whole.

There is no way Naruto could win against this man. He doesn’t know any ninjutsu, trying to take the storage scroll to try and find something he could use would basically be asking for death, with how long that would take, and he doesn’t want to risk losing a limb to the weird thing happening with space around the guy. 

_“It’s his eye. If you can blind him, you can use that time to get away.”_ Kurama says. _“I’ll shape some of your chakra for you, but I can’t do much behind this seal! All I can do is buy you some time – use that to get away!”_

Naruto doesn’t waste time thinking about what Kurama means by shaping his chakra. It’s difficult enough to dodge the strange distortions in space, especially with the man giggling like a madman and throwing the occasional kunai into the mix. A gout of flame shoots straight at the man when Naruto opens his mouth, but it passes harmlessly _through_ him instead of burning him. 

Suddenly, the spatial distortions stop, and the masked man shrugs.

“Well, whatever~.” The masked man laughs, and it’s a sound that’s full of more hate than his tone implies. “I’ll let you go this time! But just this once, okay? If I see you again I’ll definitely get you! Now, shoo!” He makes an exaggerated shooing gesture with his hands, then expectantly puts his hands on his hips, as if waiting for Naruto to run now that he’s been given the chance. 

Naruto doesn’t move. Doesn’t take his eyes off of the man’s coat and arms. Kurama, too, is quiet and tense, like he’s waiting for _something,_ and his being tense when his normal reaction to other people bothering Naruto is usually bland dismissal or irritation worries Naruto even more. 

“Not gonna leave? I tooooold you! You’re supposed to be last, so you’re not in danger!” When Naruto only gets back into a fighting stance in response, the man scoffs. “I’m super strong, you know! You’re lucky I’m not supposed to go for you yet!” The man’s tone is put-upon and pouty, but Kurama feeds what he senses to Naruto and the only thing surrounding the masked man is resentment, hate, and spite, all directed at Naruto. 

It’s so deep that Naruto feels like he could drown in it, and he can almost imagine that it makes the water in the seal-space that Kurama inhabits rise like a faucet filling a glass to overflowing -

Suddenly, the man turns around, putting his hands up like Naruto is the one who’s being unreasonable. “Well, I’m bored. I’ll go now. See you soon, blondie!” 

When Naruto blinks again, the man is gone. 

“Do you think he’s gone for real?” He asks. 

_“It’s – hard to tell.”_ Kurama admits. _“My range from inside this seal is incredibly small, and I didn’t even feel him leaving or arriving. I… think he’s left, though. Best to leave now, before he changes his mind.”_ Kurama warns. 

Naruto doesn’t need to be told twice. He takes off, leaving the ruins of Uzushio behind as he runs as fast as he can towards the nearest port and ship that will take him back to the Land of Fire. 

*

One day later, close to Konoha, Naruto asks a question. 

“Who was that?” 

Kurama responds with a massive, overwhelming flare of chakra, and Naruto gasps when it rushes like fire through his veins, and it _burns,_ so much that he’s afraid it might reduce _him_ to ash, before Kurama pulls it back and he doesn’t feel like he’s burning to a crisp from the inside anymore. 

_“An Uchiha.”_ Kurama says, and Naruto’s thoughts immediately jump to the only other Uchiha he knows – Sasuke. _“The same one that forced your parents to seal me into you, after setting me on your fucking village.”_

Naruto doesn’t ask for more information. Kurama hates being controlled more than anything, and it isn’t that much of a leap in logic to assume that what the masked Uchiha did involved just that.

When a Konoha shinobi jumps in front of him, though, Naruto realizes that he forgot to come up with an excuse for vanishing for so long, and all thoughts of what the masked man did to his only real friend leave his mind for the moment. 

*

It was a rare day when the Hokage would call Hiashi to duty. 

Not that he was a lazy man by any means – his duty as the clan head did not take away from the fact that he was still a shinobi – but for the Hokage to call him into service meant that it was truly a dire need.

And dire, it was – a youth had gone missing two weeks back, the same youth that his daughter was so enamored with despite all of his warnings for her to stay away. So thoroughly missing, in fact, that even the best tracker in ANBU – a man with the mask of a hound – had been unable to really track where he’d gone. The random traces of chakra – a strange mix of the boy’s and the _Kyuubi’s_ \- scattered around the forest are enough of a clue as to how the boy had managed such a feat. 

Much as he would personally prefer that Uzumaki Naruto be left to find his own way – he firmly believes that that would be the most benevolent decision, rather than forcing him to stay in a village that would never welcome him – the child was the village’s Jinchuriki. Not only that, but the Kyuubi’s container. 

Hiashi still has nightmares of the fox’s rampage, and those are enough to help him remember that he is not hunting down a lost child but a weapon. The sooner it was recovered, the better. 

It’s his memory of the Kyuubi’s attack that allows him to recognize the massive flare of corrupt chakra for what it is, brief as it was. None but the Hyuga – and the Uchiha, when they were still alive – would understand what that kind of Chakra _looks_ like. 

It was – a deep red, like blood drying and dried, orange fire consuming the last pieces of the world, dark yellow and gold of a sunset edging into night. It twists like a beast contained in a too-small box, and Hiashi worries that the Kyuubi might have finally awakened once more, that the traces left behind at the beginning were just the early signs of disaster, that it had begun to overwhelm its container and the seal created by the dying actions of two desperate parents –

But then just as suddenly as it appeared, the chakra vanishes, retreating as if pulled back, a beast reprimanded for running wild. Hiashi follows it as it returns to its source, and it doesn’t take long for his eyes to focus on a shock of yellow hair and an orange jumpsuit running towards Konoha. 

*

To say that the old man is angry is an understatement. Naruto isn’t sure if it’s really because the Hokage was really concerned for him, or if it’s because a dangerous weapon decided to run off somewhere that no one could find him. 

“There was a man in a black coat.” Naruto says, interrupting the old man’s angry rant. “It had red clouds on it. He –“ Kurama’s anger is still boiling, which makes Naruto shake a little, but he uses it to his advantage. The story of the masked man isn’t a lie by any means, but it’s easy to make it seem like that was _all_ that happened, twisting the story of Naruto’s curious investigation of a village his demonic tenant had told him about into one of him getting kidnapped. 

“He tried to – I got away, but I think, I think he just let me go.” Naruto continues, voice shaky and exhausted. “I- I just wanted to take a bit of a look at the forest, you know? But then he did this weird, twisting space thing, and then-“ 

_“Smart.”_ Kurama growls. _“If you were gone for so long because you ran away, then they’d lock you up tighter than I am in you.”_

Naruto is glad Kurama thinks it’s smart, because he’d had to come up with it while being dragged to the Hokage’s office by a very angry Hyuga.  
“I don’t know what happened then.” Naruto says, because it’s true – he doesn’t understand what the man was doing at _all,_ or how he was doing it. Kurama was sure that it was the man’s eye that made it possible, but there was no way to be sure, now. 

Naruto finishes his story with his legs shaking from nerves that come from lying to the man known as the God of Shinobi, but he thinks that the shaking is easy enough to mistake for fear. 

The old man’s expression has switched from anger to concern, and it strikes Naruto then how _old_ the Hokage looks, now. 

_“He’s still stronger than most other shinobi you’ve met.”_ Kurama points out dryly. _“But he probably expected to retire when your father took the hat. He’s still strong, I’ll give him that, but…_

“To think you would be targeted like this…” The Hokage pinches the bridge of his nose, and Kurama tells him of _regret, shame, sadness, relief._ “I’m sorry, Naruto, for what you’ve gone through. Please, go home and rest. I will make sure this does not happen again.” 

*

The village changes. 

Speaking of the Kyuubi Jinchuriki is strictly forbidden, and the ANBU guard assigned to Naruto is practically tripled in intensity and number. Kurama often points out masked men and women under _henge,_ walking in such a way that they can follow Naruto while still keeping a safe, “stealthy” distance. 

The scornful looks remain, and Naruto is barred from even more stores and given even more overpriced food. It’s difficult, but Naruto manages to scrape by. Teuchi is, thankfully as always, glad to see Naruto come in, only scolding him a little for leaving him without his favorite customer for so long before serving him a bowl of ramen with a smile. 

School is the same. Even if Naruto isn’t at the bottom of the class anymore, his classmates still treat him a bit like he’s an idiot. Force of habit, maybe, or maybe they really just think that he’s an idiot. 

There was a time when that would have hurt Naruto, but it’s easy enough to ignore them when he has Kurama to talk to anyways. 

The storage scroll remains hidden under his bed, untouched and still inside his bag. With the constant watch on him, there is simply no chance to get it and its contents out – and spotting Naruto with ninja supplies and a bunch of scrolls and books would look suspicious since he wasn’t allowed into the library yet, and most shops with ninja tools were either too expensive for Naruto or simply didn’t allow him in. 

So he leaves it there for the future, when he finally graduates from the academy and gets put into a team. 

*

In another world, Naruto would have been put into a team with the two best-performing students in his class. 

But Naruto is hardly dead last anymore, and so things go differently this time. 

Team Eight is composed of one Uzumaki Naruto, Hyuga Hinata, and Aburame Shino.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took much longer than I expected. Sorry about that, I was finishing my thesis and other college stuff, but I'm basically a graduate now so, yay. Grad school next, because I clearly hate myself. 
> 
> Anyways, from this point on I suppose things will start going a bit differently. By "differently" I mean that I'll somewhat be following canon but I'll be making up big changes on the fly that come from Naruto being in a different team. My only real intention when I started writing this was "what if X was actually developed as a character/even just in power level" so like, yeah. 
> 
> I hope no one makes the mistake of thinking that making friends with the immortal chakra construct demon fox inside him solved _all_ of Naruto's problems. Similarly, Naruto being in a different team will have a massive effect on three characters in particular, and when I get to the Chunin Exams I'm hoping to be able to make that effect much more clear. 
> 
> Naruto's like, a motivation amplifier for most people around him in canon, but tbh in this fic I've already taken a lot of liberties with Naruto personality-wise. 
> 
> Here's to hoping the next chapter doesn't take me quite as long to finish. D-Ranks are pretty boring, huh?

**Author's Note:**

> As I'm sure many people here already know, I am not particularly consistent at updating anything. Part of that is writer's block. Part of that is me doing other stuff. Part of that is work and/or school. I try to write more, but life happens, you know?
> 
> However, this time, I'm not going to be abandoning this fic. I'll warn everyone now: I actually didn't like Naruto very much when Shippuden came up. So this will probably go in a different direction than that did. 
> 
> At the moment, the early part of this fic is heavily inspired by the amazing Of Harrowed Hearts by Sable_Scribe (It's linked at beginning notes), but that's only gonna go as far as "goes back to uzushiogakure to learn cool stuff about his heritage" 
> 
> Ah, well. I'm already working on the next chapter, so expect it by next week if I don't get distracted/busy. 
> 
> If I got spelling or something like that wrong, feel free to tell me so I can fix it


End file.
